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GameOver22 on 09 November 2012
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Kasz216 said:
noname2200 said:

2. Independents. State polls showed Romney winning big among independents. Historically, any candidate polling that well among independents wins. But as it turned out, many of those independents were former Republicans who now self-identify as independents. The state polls weren't oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans - there just weren't as many Republicans this time because they were calling themselves independents.

If so that's one place the polls were wrong.  They all tended to say Republican self identification was up.

Exit Polls (rep 2008-32%; rep 2012-32%) (ind 2008-34%; ind 2009-34%) (dem 2008-39%; dem 2012-38%)-this is national level

Yeah, I'm actually not seeing much to support the article's claim. If you look at the state exit polls, the numbers seem to be pretty consistent between 2008 and 2012 as well. I'm just not seeing this movement from the republican party to the independent category. There actually seems to be a pretty big swing for how the independents voted as well (+8 Obama in 2008; -5 Obama in 2012). My guess, there are more indendents that lean republican this time around, but they didn't come from the republican party....this would match up with Obama's smaller popular vote victory as well.

Edit: Main point: Obama won because there are more democratic identifiers...not because of a movement from the republican to the independent category.